I am about to rewire my National Lap Steel. It's one single coil with a volume and tone control. I'm putting in new pots and using shielded wire through out, I may or may not change the cap, it depends on if the current one works, I'll wire it in first just to see.The steel has a signal wire with a 1/4" jack for connecting to an amp. Here's my question: I would like to install 1/4" female jack on the guitar, which would require a hole drilled to fit the jack. Would this have a negative impact on the selling price? It's not that I want to sell it. I just don't want to do anything stupid that I my regret later. Minimally I have to install a new cable. You can see the guitar in welcome section of the board.

Any vintage guitar will still fetch a decent amount of money even if you modify it some, but I think that if two were next to each other and one was stock and one was modified, the modified one would probably not be worth as much and would probably cost less.

I don't know if I understand this completely though. It already has one jack, so why would you need another?

The current cord and jack doesn't work, so what I'm asking is should I replace the cord and jack or install a 1/4" female jack into the guitar. the jack would require enlarging the exsisting hole so that 1/4" female jack can be installed.

I think steel players are more practically minded than the rich wankers who pay exorbitant prices for "vintage" Strats, LPs and such, and hide them in safes. I doubt it will detract from the value significantly as people buy lap steels to play them, not as "collector's items." But I'd suggest talking to someone more familiar with the vintage steel market than I am. Look up Steinar Gregertsen's profile here and PM him, or contact him through his page: http://www.gregertsen.com/

I've deciced what I'll do with the hard wired cable. I will replace the exsisting one and replace with a short cable w/ 1/4" female connector. This may not be the most elegant solution, but I won't drilling any holes. I can always return it to it's orginal configurationand not fell bad later I had altered it in any way.

Here's an update of my progress:Installed 2 new pots, a 250k for the volume, a 500k for the tone. I left the cap in the circut. I followed a wiring diagram that I found on the Steel Guitar Forum, which suggested the mixing of different size pots.I did install a new signal cable w/ 1/4" male connector to plug directly into effects or a amp. This was an extra guitar cable I had setting around, it's a dark green color that looks good with golden yellow MOTS.Removed the inline tuners, soaked in some penitrating oil and cleaned up with a small brass brush. This has made their movement smoother. Have not been able to restring yet as I had to apply some glue to the back fretboard panel, cause it was popping up off the neck. It's clamped up and drying until tomorrow. I've got some flat wounds that are going on and I can't wait to hear some cryin' and moanin' come out of this guitar.I'll keep ya posted